I hate how our elementary school handles communications. When we first enrolled our sons, I gave my phone and email and told the school to always contact me first, as I generally can keep my phone on all day and have access to email more frequently. My wife has to keep her phone off at work most of the day, and can’t check email from work (personal email is blocked). In spite of that, for the first several months, anytime they had an issue they tried to call or email my wife, and if they didn’t reach her, just waited and tried her again. They never even attempted to contact me. I finally got them to make me the primary contact, though I think they struggled to understand why any child’s mother would be less available than the father. All was good for a few years. Now that I work from home, four houses away from the school, it makes even more sense for me to handle all communications. But again this morning, I received a text from my wife saying the school had called her repeatedly (my phone never rang once) and emailed her saying that our son was being held in the nurse’s office until a form could be brought to the school attesting he was covid negative. I walked the form over and asked them why they didn’t try to call me, and they just kept saying, we called your wife, but she wasn’t answering. I can’t seem to get the staff at the school to understand that they not only can call me, but I should be the first one every time.

Pull a fast one on them and have them put your phone # as your wife's on the contact info. 😉

that’s actually a really good idea

Yeah, I am dealing with an AC company that almost insists that I be there, and not my wife. Yes, it's better if I can be there, but she's an intelligent woman, there's no reason she can't handle you